Engineering Safer Cities: The American Firearm Ecosystem

Overview

As mass shootings and crime — including hate crimes — rise across the country, efforts to prevent the occurrence of such events are taking place through evidence-based scientific research, monitoring, policing, education, and policymaking. However, these efforts are not coordinated and seldom coalesce to maximize their effectiveness. Engineering can take a leading role in leading such coordination towards scientifically-based policies, grounded in objective evidence. During this event, we will convene experts to share their knowledge and perspectives with the NYU community and engage in conversation around violence, criminality, and neighborhood security in our local communities.

This event is co-sponsored by the NYU Tandon School of Engineering’s Center for Science + Urban Progress, Undergraduate Student Council, and Graduate Student Council.

Kick-off Event

The American Firearm Ecosystem

In the United States, there are more guns than people and this gap is only widening. Consequences are following in quick step, as guns now take more lives per year than motor vehicle accidents. Under the support of the National Science Foundation, NYU Tandon’s Center for Urban Science + Progress (CUSP) is leading a multi-university effort to better understand the American “firearm ecosystem,” which constitutes a complex system with intertwined dynamics of firearm prevalence, legislation, media coverage, socioeconomic factors, political state of affairs, and social phenomena. This event will convene the following research team to report on their progress and engage the community in engineering-led research on the firearm ecosystem:

• Prof. Igor Belykh, Distinguished University Professor, Department of Mathematics and Statistics, Georgia State University
• Prof. James Macinko, Associate Dean for Research & Professor, Departments of Community Health Sciences and Health Policy and Management, UCLA
• Prof. Oded Nov, Chair & Professor, Department of Technology Management and Innovation, NYU Tandon School of Engineering
• Prof. Maurizio Porfiri, Director & Institute Professor, Center for Urban Science and Progress, NYU Tandon School of Engineering
• Prof. Rifat Sipahi, Associate Chair for Research Affairs & Professor, Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, Northeastern University

Event Structure

This event will begin with informal “flash” technical talks from our featured speakers, followed by an open dialogue with student participants/attendees with the goals of (1) better understanding the sociopolitical, psychological, technological, and economic intersections of the topics under discussion, and (2) identifying how we, in our various roles at Tandon, might partner with our community to address the highlighted issues and inequities from an engineering-driven perspective.